Greetings from the Eastern Time Zone Everyone!!! If you have been following me on Twitter, and/or Cinch, then you know that we recently moved cross country a couple of weeks ago. We left on Monday April 6th, and arrived in Jacksonville, NC on Saturday April 11th. Here’s a little summary of how it went.

Day 1: Left Sacramento a little later than we had anticipated. It was so hard not to! The girls did really well with having to sit in the car all day. We packed up a bunch of their Disney movies, and I had won a Leapster and two games from another bloggy giveaway site. I was so excited to give that to the girls, but knew they’d fight over it, so Daddy went searching for another one and bought a few more games as well. They were very happy on the drive, and even though they both had different games, they didn’t fight over them! They actually passed them back and forth when they were done with them.

I think we stopped every 2-3 hours at various rest stops, and gas stations and rest stops. Not too bad. We definitely wanted to make sure the girls were ok, and didn’t want to use pull-ups through the drive. They did exceptionally well, considering we left really late, and arrived in Phoenix, AZ at 2am. We all pretty much crashed as soon as we got the girls’ Princess air beds set up… Tomorrow, we rest. 

Day 2: We hung out in AZ with my hubby’s grandparents. It was pretty much a veg out day and we loved it. It was hot enough that we all got to hop in the swimming pool for a little while. Had a great meal, and hung out by the fire pit. A perfect way to spend a day. 

Day 3: Got up and left Phoenix, on our way through. Just past Flagstaff, we were stuck. They had closed I-40 due to high winds, and zero visibility from a dust storm. There was no way through. After some debate, we turned around and drove back to Flagstaff and grabbed a hotel room for the night. We paid for the internet and checked the traffic routes and found out that they had opened the roads around 6pm. I also looked up some more information about my Magellan Maestro and found out that I could get a subscription to traffic alerts. It was approx $40 for the year. I figured it was totally worth it if we happened to run into something like this again, we’d hopefully be able to navigate around it and get past it. Even though the roads were opened, we figured that if we could get any sleep, we could just get up super early and start driving early.  Well, the funny thing was, according to the weather channel there, they were expecting snow around midnight, so it was either drive out early, or wait till morning and hope the snow wasn’t that bad. Daddy set alarms and checked the weather channel again around 10pm and found out that the weather alerts had been canceled. We slept till 1am checked out and got on the road. 

Day 4: We drove forever it seemed, through Texas and Oklahoma. It was probably the longest part of the drive. We drove until we couldn’t drive any more. I think we ended up clocking in a little over 20 hours of driving between the two of us. We ended up stopping in a small town called Sallisaw, and stayed at a former Best Western. It wasn’t bad. It was just a place to rest for the night and get a few hours of sleep. 

Day 5: We got up early and drove into Arkansas, used our Magellan to locate a Starbucks nearby and stopped at one in Ft. Smith and ordered some caffeine!! We also got the girls a little bit of breakfast. They love Starbucks, so this was a real treat for them. While there we talked with a State Trooper who was really nice. We sat and ate a little and realized that we were already a little bit behind the schedule. Well, more than we already were. It was time to get back on the road. We drove and drove all the way to Tennessee. When we crossed the state line, I had noticed some mention of bad storms and even tornadoes in Tennessee, and  I couldn’t imagine. The weather where we were was beautiful (thankfully). I googled for some information and found out that tornadoes had hit Murfreeboro, a town where one friend lives, and not far from another. I immediately called to check on her and make sure she was ok. She was obviously, and rightly, shaken up. A few tornadoes had gone all around her, and somehow missed her cul-de-sac. Talk about a miracle. I called my other friend who lives not too far away in Lewisburg, and made sure she was ok. We ended up talking for over an hour… 🙂 She didn’t know it, but she kept me going while I was driving, and my hubby was napping. Thanks Girl! We didn’t quite make it to the mountains. Instead, we stopped at a Holiday Inn Express near Knoxville. We decided to tackle the mountains in the morning. It was Friday night. We had planned on being in NC by now but instead, it seems we were being watched over and protected from some crazy weather. Sleep… 

Day 6: This is it. It’s NC or bust! We had to get to Jacksonville before 1230pm so we could pick up our keys to our new home. We woke up around 4am and got on the road. We traded off a couple of times until for some reason, my eyes just weren’t staying open! Poor Daddy ended up driving most of the way in. It was amazing. We crossed the state line, and knew this was the home stretch. Once we got through to Raleigh, we knew we were so close! I had to laugh though. We drove through some pretty rural areas after we passed through Raleigh. I almost thought to myself… “How will I ever survive out here?” … I’m glad I kept an open mind though. We got to the office at just after 1230 and got our keys! WOOHOO! Daddy drove us to our new home. At first I wasn’t too sure how I’d like it, until I saw it for the first time. Yes, this was the first time I’d ever seen the house in person. It was gorgeous. We went in and straight to the back yard. The girls and our dog ran circles around the yard for several minutes. It was so funny. The laughter and smiles were that confirmation that we’d be just fine here. We found out that the house had all of the utilities turned off, and were quite disappointed. We didn’t realize that they’d actually be shut off awaiting our visit to have them turned on. Boy California sure does wear off on a person. 🙂 Two more days in a hotel… Oh well.. We could do it… after all, we did just survive a cross country trip through all kinds of weird events with our almost 4 year old girls a dog and two very determined adults. We could survive just about anything. 

Take a look at all of our photos from the drive cross country…

Coming up: Magellan Maestro 4350 review & Rubbermaid Totes: Can they survive a Cross Country move?